One Mile an Hour are: Jeff Kightly (guitar/vox), Matt Day (bass/vox) and Dave Goldsmith (drums/keys/vox). They have just released their debut record, with songs influenced by Scandinavian landscapes and stories, but recorded almost entirely near the sea on the southern coast of England.
It’s folk music, I guess, or at least it is mostly folk music. Folk music with subtle muscle and patches of contemplative noodling. It’s dark, it’s light, it’s beautiful. It’s a walk along a windswept shore, with the current tugging at your ankles and treasure shimmering beneath the foamy breakers.
I’m pulling out three songs here to serve as enticements, but I encourage you to sit down with a refreshing beverage and listen to the whole thing all the way through.
First up: Sunken Ships, for a number of reasons. It is the first song on the record; it was the first song I listened to, because I like to do these things in order and because I have a weakness for songs about ships; and after I heard it I wanted to hear the rest of the record because I wanted to see where they were going with what they were doing.
Second: Love You More. I waffled back and forth between this one and Trouble’s Roots but finally picked this one because one of their more purely folk-y tunes. Also it’s a delicate, pretty love song, and I have a weakness for those, too.
Third and finally, Nine Eight: Live, which is the last song. It’s also a ten minute instrumental which I described to someone yesterday as “quasi-jammy shoegaze.” Here is where the really cut loose and let you listen to them think, musically, for a while. Where they wrap up all of their loose ends and flex the muscles I mentioned at the beginning. It’s also the one song not recorded by the sea; the band had the chance to work in Studio 2 at Abbey Road Studios, and this is the result.